Married cleaner cleared of rape charges after Kingston incident

A married cleaner has been cleared of raping a 17-year-old in a car park on New Year’s Eve.

Soki Macanda, from Surbiton, was acquitted on both counts of rape against him after telling jurors he believed the sex was consensual.

The 30-year-old, who works at Claf Ohlson in Kingston and DSD Solutions in Surbiton, was cleared at the Old Bailey on Tuesday, October 25.

During the trial, jurors heard the teenager describe what she alleged had happened on December 31, 2010, in the Bittoms car park in Kingston.

The prosecution alleged that Mr Macanda led the girl away and attacked her after she collapsed in the street and vomited from drinking too much.

But Mr Macanda, who came to the UK as a refugee from Angola 11 years ago, told the court he walked arm in arm with the girl to the car park after she accepted his offer to “make her happy”.

He said: “She said ‘make me happy, do whatever you need to do to me’. When we was walking I said to her: ‘Did you have a good time?’. I saw the car park and said: ‘Can I take you there?’ and she
said: ‘Yes’.

“I was thinking we just go there for kiss each other, but when we started kiss each other she was moaning and then afterward she had her arm inside my pants.”

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During the trial, the jurors also heard the girl said she slipped in and out of consciousness while in the car park, but remembers asking Mr Macanda to get a condom and later staggering back to the
nightclub in High Street, Kingston, where she had been with friends.

The jury also heard that at least two text messages had been sent from the girl’s mobile phone to her ex-boyfriend prior to the incident.

The defendant’s lawyer, David Jubb, suggested the messages indicated the girl was trying to “get back” at her ex-boyfriend, with whom she had broken up shortly before.